Mailfence

Mailfence is an encrypted email service that offers OpenPGP based end-to-end encryption and digital signatures.

8.3/10

How we calculate ratings →

Handling

Does the policy allow personally-targeted or behavioral marketing? No

10/10

Does the service allow you to permanently delete your personal data? Yes, using an automated mechanism

5/5

Does the service allow third-party access to private personal data? No

10/10

This may come in the form of outright data sharing or by using local third-party analytics software (such as Google Analytics, which collects a plethora of user information).

Note that whether the policy allows sharing aggregated user data does not affect this question.

If the personal data is encrypted when it passes through the third-party, it does not count as third-party access (as the data is inaccessible to that party).

If personal data has been made public by, for example, posting it to a blog, it does not count as private personal information (and is therefore not considered by this question).

Score

Yes

The policy allows sharing personal data with third parties (not just critical service providers), and does not explicitly list the third parties.

Yes, all parties specified (including non-critical service providers such as advertisers)

30%

Yes, not all parties specified (but only to critical service providers)

70%

Yes, all parties specified (only to critical service providers)

80%

100%

Citation

We do not sell, trade or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information except when forced by Belgian law [...].

When does the policy allow law enforcement access to personal data? Not specified

0/5

Score

Always

This includes cases in which law enforcement either runs the service or has a known backdoor into (or relationship with) the service.

Not specified

When reasonably requested

60%

Only when required by a court order or subpoena

80%

N/A (no personal data to share)

The service would have no personal data to share with law enforcement.

100%

Never (special legal jurisdiction)

The service operates in a jurisdiction in which sharing data with law enforcement is never required.

100%

Citation

We do not participate nor co-operate with any kind of private or government surveillance or monitoring service. Note that Belgium does not have any equivalent to the US NSL (National Security Letter) and gag order, so we cannot be forced to do something without being allowed to disclose it.
We do not co-operate with the NSA, we do not offer any authority shadow access to our Service.
We also do not directly disclose any information about our users to law enforcement agencies from outside Belgium and it would be illegal for us to do so.
Check our transparency report along with an up-to-date warrant canary.

Notes

The service discloses who they won't share data to, but doesn't mention if and when they will to other parties.

Transparency

Does the policy outline the service's general security practices? Yes

2/3

Score

Somewhat

The policy provides only a very vague overview of its security practices.

30%

Yes

60%

Yes, including audits

"Reviews," "monitoring," etc. also count as audits.

80%

Yes, including independent audits

Independent "reviews," "monitoring," etc. also count as independent audits.

100%

N/A

The service doesn't collect any personal information.

100%

Notes

There are seperate white papers for this:
https://mailfence.com/en/secure-email.jsp
https://mailfence.com/en/end-to-end-encryption.jsp
https://mailfence.com/en/two-factor-authentication.jsp

Is the policy's history made available? Only the date it was last modified

3/5

Does the policy require users to be notified in case of a data breach? Not necessarily

0/7

Will affected users be notified when the policy is meaningfully changed? Yes

5/5

Collection

Does the service collect personal data from third parties? No

10/10

Is it clear why the service collects the personal data that it does? Yes

10/10

Does the service allow the user to control whether personal data is collected or used for non-critical purposes? N/A (no data used for non-critical purposes)

10/10

Does the policy list the personal data it collects? Yes, exhaustively

10/10

Score

The policy does not claim to not collect personal data, but it also doesn't provide any meaningful insight into the types of personal data it collects.

Only summarily

The policy uses overly vague language to provide a summary of the types of collected personal data.

30%

Yes, generally

All general categories of collected personal data are listed, though not all types of personal data are explicitly mentioned (for example, the list might use a phrase like 'such as' when listing types of personal data).

70%

Yes, exhaustively

All types of collected personal data are listed specifically

100%

N/A (no personal data is collected)

100%

Citation

We collect IP addresses, message-ID's, sender and recipient addresses, subjects, browser versions, countries and timestamps.
When registering, you will be asked to enter an external email address. We send your activation code to this address and use it to communicate with you in case you are unable to access your account.
Incoming and outgoing messages are automatically analysed by our anti-spam, anti-virus and anti-abuse checking routines.
We implement a local instance of Matomo, an open source analytics tool, on the commercial website only (home, registration and subscription pages included) and not within the application itself.
When you pay by credit card we store some of its details.
Team members have signed a confidentiality agreement to protect collected data.

Last Updated

June 24, 2020

Sources

Source #1 ↗

Contributors

doamatto